One day when Pansy was in the large hall of the harem, Rayma came to her, a look of feverish excitement in her eyes.
"Do you still wish to escape?" she asked, watching her supplanter as if she could not believe such a desire could lie in the heart of any woman the Sultan pleased to favour.
For Pansy her struggle became daily more difficult. It was an obsession now, her wish to escape from her captor.
"How can I? Whichever way I turn someone is there to stop me."
"There is one who will not stop you. Not if he is paid well enough," Rayma said, her voice dropping to a whisper.
"Who is that?" Pansy asked quickly.
"One of the eunuchs who guards your room at night. He loves jewels beyond all things on earth. And surely the Sultan has given you plenty, although you never wear them."
The Sultan had given Pansy none, because he knew she would not accept them. But she had jewels of her own; one that would be bribe enough for anybody—the great diamond that had aroused her lover's comments one night in the moonlit garden of Grand Canary.
Pansy clutched at the mere idea of escape. Where she would escape to, she did not pause to consider. To escape she forgot his colour, his religion, his wild life, his treatment of her father, everything, except her own love for him.
"How do you know he'll let himself be bribed?" she asked.